


Breathe

by shinesurge



Category: Kidd Commander (Webcomic)
Genre: Blood, Gen, Gore, Medical Squick, Stitches
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-15
Updated: 2018-08-15
Packaged: 2019-06-27 15:53:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,195
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15688611
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shinesurge/pseuds/shinesurge
Summary: Ulrich NEEDS stitches, he doesn't necessarily WANT them.





	Breathe

**Author's Note:**

> it's just shameless Ulrich suffering whoops.

Ulrich had completely avoided hospitals for over a decade, dealing with any smaller injuries himself and, when _absolutely_ necessary, forcing a smile and smothering his panic long enough to get bones set or stitches stitched by smaller private practices. He could handle sickness and disinfection mostly on his own; when over-the-counter couldn't cut it, he probably knew of an herbal remedy that could do the trick. Jocasta's bedroom wasn't like any hospital or doctor's office he'd ever been to, but Ulrich's anxiety had plenty of other reasons to run away with him as he stood in the middle of the floorspace, bleeding.

He had been sent to the back of the house after a harrowing walk at Jo's side, straight from the jellyfish graveyard they'd been ambushed in to her front porch, under stern orders to keep pressure on the wound just under his ribs. Shock and a considerable amount of humility as Jocasta barked orders had kept him compliant through the initial flurry of activity, but now it was quiet, and he _hurt_ , and he was afraid of the hole in his side but he was even more afraid of whatever came next.

From the kitchen he heard a muffled rush of air, like wings, and tasted a different kind of smoke from the dry herbal stuff that the entire shack seemed to be infused with. He recognized it from the time Jo had materialized in The Noon's kitchen and startled him so badly, and from just now when he himself had been caught up in a tumult of feathers and fire and dragged through that freezing voidspace, feeling like Something was trying to wedge itself between the bonds in his atoms and rend him apart. Ulrich had decided Walking was not a thing he enjoyed, and he was dimly dreading the return trip.

Someone complaining, raised voices. Phineas had come back with her this time. The knot of fear in Ulrich's throat ratcheted a few clicks tighter as quick footsteps ( _claws_ ) approached the closed door. It flung open before he had a chance to prepare himself, but admittedly he wouldn't have been able to do much preparing anyway.

Jocasta blew through the door and locked it behind her, ominously, muffling Phineas' shouts after them. Ulrich couldn't make out what she was on about. Jo was shaking her head.

"I swear to god, like she never seen a gut wound before." Jo crossed her bedroom to a nook with a messy worktable, swished her heavy red curtains closed and switched on a surprisingly bright light affixed to a swinging arm. She was still mumbling to herself as she cleared things off the high table; sharp instruments, powders, jars full of animal bits. She laid a sheet over the top and he realized she was making an examination area. Or an operating table. He thought he might be sick, but the thought of vomiting in Jocasta Hubris' bedroom was so mortifying he choked out the urge with a viciousness even he found impressive.

Jocasta was changing her gloves, Ulrich realized with a jolt of fresh panic. He knew instinctively he shouldn't be seeing this and focused on his shoes before he remembered he had been avoiding looking at his bloodstained shirt. His fingers were stained that sickly yellow color that follows a wash of blood, and the light glistening off of his own torn flesh peeking out unnaturally between his fingers made him whimper pitifully before he could stop himself.

"Take 'er easy hun." Jo wasn't smoking but she sounded like she was, her speech coming through gritted teeth that must have wanted to balance a pipe between them. When she turned, hurrying across the room to reach him, a matchstick was held agitatedly between her lips. She stood in front of him and placed her hands firmly on his shoulders.

"Look at me?" Ulrich did, realizing now how much mud was still caked on his glasses. Jocasta gently took them off his face and set them aside, brushed her hand over his hair a few times. A shower of dry dirt filtered down and scattered on the floor; Ulrich could feel most of that side of his head was a matted mess.

"Sorry." he said automatically. Jo stepped back and shook her head.

"It's just dirt," she replied. She gestured to the table she'd cleared off.

"Can you hop up there? There's a stepstool underneath." Ulrich glanced over; the table seemed impossibly far away. "Take your shirt off too."

Ulrich made the journey shakily, swallowing against a queasy feeling as he felt his fingers slide against his wound when he sat down. Jo had somehow appeared at his side already. Ulrich had tacitly refused to remove his shirt, only holding the hem up out of the way. Jo decided not to push it.

"How you holding up?" Jocasta asked, rummaging in a desk drawer. "Are you nervous?"

"Yes." Ulrich admitted pathetically. "I don't like doctors." Eugh, he sounded like a _child._ Jo smirked to herself.

"Yeah me neither." Among a few other things, she pulled a sealed plastic pouch Ulrich recognized was full of suture tools and he paled.

Jocasta held a vial and a small syringe up in front of him patiently, slipping easily into what must have been a practiced speech.

"This is gonna sting a little, but it's not-"

"What is it?" Ulrich interrupted, flustered.

"Anasthetic." Ulrich shook his head violently, which was a mistake that made him feel like his eyes were sloshing around in his head.

"No anasthetic." Jocasta fixed him with an unimpressed glare.

"Fuckssake kid, you're bleeding all over my goddamn table already and I can't sew you up if you're squirming every time I stick you. Nobody's gonna give a shit-"

"I have had stitches without anasthetic before. I am fine, please just get it over with." Ulrich could feel heat radiating off of her skin, her eyes glinted with steel.

"You're awful green around the gills for someone with all this medical experience."

"It's the medical experience that is the problem." Ulrich ran his tongue over his cracked lips. "Please, I don't want it." Jo's fingertips were very suddenly up inside his wound and pain exploded from his hip to his shoulder. He yelped, mostly in surprise, jerking away from her fast enough to send the light and its arm swinging out over the floor.

"What the hell are you _doing?_ " he demanded.

"You really want me and my needle poking around in there?" Jo asked tartly. "Because I promise you that's a lot worse than what you just felt." Ulrich shook his head and glared at her as well as he could from his pale face.

"I will take my chances."

Something in Jocasta's look changed. She chewed on her matchstick thoughtfully.

"No anasthetic." She posited, a question and a statement both.

" _No."_

Jo sighed and reached for a bottle of disinfectant, a sponge of gauze and settled down on her stool.

"Boy we ain't got time to be sortin' out your mental shit." She splashed the disinfectant directly into the gap in Ulrich's side and he closed his eyes against the burn, feeling blood and a shock of cold liquid running down his skin and soaking through his waistband. Painful, but not as bad as this sort of thing usually was; she must make it herself. He could feel her gaze on him and elected to keep his eyes shut. "Just don't fight me." she said, now dragging the gauze through his wound. He could feel dirt gritting around sharply between his flesh and the scratchy fabric and took a deep breath, trying to steady himself. Jocasta worked quickly, and soon set aside two bloody wads of gauze so she could open the pouch of sterile tools. Somehow, Ulrich stiffened even more, and Jo noticed.

"You good?"

"Yes."

"You want something to bite down on at least?"

"No." Jo snorted incredulously.

"What's the problem with _that?_ " Ulrich felt a welcome break in his anxiety in the form of familiar frustration. There was no way to explain this that wouldn't require explaining too many other things, and his patience was already dangerously thin. He didn't particularly _want_ to be short with her, and he didn't foresee that going well for him anyway. He made a noise that might have been thinking, or whining.

"I just don't like it." he answered lamely. The metal tools clattered to the table beside him and sent his thoughts scurrying.

"Well I won't make fun of you if you change your mind." Jo said softly, gathering the needle and driver. "I ain't sewing up your lip if you chew through it though." Ulrich nodded at her joke too seriously, not really paying attention. He focused on the unmade bed, the scattered personal items of a witch, not really registering them. Felt the heat of Jocasta's aura flare as she became absorbed in her task. She set down the needle and picked up the scalpel instead.

"I'm gonna tell you everything I do," Jo mumbled in an absent, flat tone. "would that help?"

Ulrich nodded. Information was good. Jo held up the scalpel, although he wasn't looking.

"The tear is too jagged, I need to take some of the edge off to make a clean seam." It really was incredible that Ulrich could feel his anxiety spike at this point, but his heart somehow hammered harder in his chest anyway. "Not a lot, it'll be fast." Ulrich felt pressure and tension, but the pain radiating from Jo's movements in the wound had bloomed the discomfort into a confusing watercolor blur that covered his entire left side; he couldn't tell where or what was hurting now it just _did._

"You ever cut yourself shaving?" Jo asked companionably. Ulrich giggled hoarse and delirious, unable to decide on a response before she suddenly sliced into him, the unpleasant wash of sensation instantly focusing back to a single point as the metal ate easily through him. By the time his startled moan left him she had already finished. He tried to ignore the wet sound of his own skin as she set it aside.

"Holdin' up there babe?"

"Fantastic." Ulrich responded, not at all fantastic.

"Disinfectant." Jo said, like she'd just remembered she was supposed to be narrating. The cool burn this time was almost a relief after the cutting. A little more cleaning, then she went for the needle again.

"Here's the stitches," Jo said. Then there were stitches.

The first two punctures were about what he expected. He was familiar with pain that made him dizzy; he remembered the feeling of his teeth coming away in the hands that beat his face, he recalled burning and electricity, the sound of wood striking against bone, and he kept breathing and it was Fine because he knew objectively this wouldn't kill him. At least once this particular agony was over he could trust he would be better for it. Then, when the first stitch was being pulled taut, right across the center of the gap, Ulrich was positive his skin was going to tear and they'd be worse off than before. Nausea surged up into his skull and between this and the needle re-emerging on the other side of the wound he was suddenly overwhelmed with two equally dire sensations, his brain a panicky bird fluttering helplessly between two emergencies. The thread sliding through the perforations was a wafer-thin razor grating through him, even with Jo's efficient and practiced machinations. He gripped the fingernails of his opposite hand into his thigh and grit his teeth, eyes still shut and fighting to keep his breathing even. She deftly made a knot in the first stitch.

"That's one." Jocasta quipped gleefully, glancing up at her patient. She raised an eyebrow at Ulrich's visible trembling. His face had gone completely white. "Don't you pass out on me." She said, not unkindly. Ulrich took a shuddering breath.

" _Please_." he choked out. It was meant to be biting but it came out more like a sincere plea. He groaned involuntarily as he felt her position the needle near one end of the gash, plunging it through flesh before he had time to psyche himself out.

"I'm impressed," Jo mused. "I've had lots of tough guys talk like 'no drugs' before, but most of them change their tune pretty quick." More of that awful papercut feeling as the thread was drawn; Ulrich exhaled, curling the fingers holding his shirt out of the way. His toes curled in his shoes. Another knot. Jo went for the other extreme of the cut, moving swiftly.

"I don't like," Ulrich's cadence was broken and uncomfortable, coming in short bursts. "I don't like drugs. I don't like-nng" his stomach turned over again when she pulled this time. He swallowed thickly. "I don't like not knowing w-what's happening to me."

"Sure," Jo said noncommittally. She sat back and inspected her work, then patted his knee. More dust shook free from his slacks and clattered to the wooden floor. "Almost done, two more."

Two, he could do two, he'd already done three. He reminded himself to breathe.

 


End file.
